Life, 1922-08-17 · page 27 of 36
Life — August 17, 1922 — page 27: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This 1920s satire mocks avant-garde modern art movements, particularly Cubism and Vorticism. A "Pilgrim" visitor encounters an artist whose work is incomprehensibly abstract—he claims a striped dog is actually a perfect modern artwork, its "color effect" explained away implausibly. The joke escalates when the artist's wife appears: she's described as a chaotic arrangement of triangles (referencing the famous Cubist painting "Nude Descending a Staircase"). The Pilgrim literally cannot distinguish her from the staircase, and the artist offers inedible "Cubist breakfast" featuring poisoned food. The satire targets the pretentiousness of modernist artists who justify nonsensical work through pseudo-intellectual explanation. The Pilgrim's breakdown—losing color vision and becoming "an isosceles triangle"—suggests exposure to such art causes mental deterioration. This reflects widespread early-20th-century public skepticism toward abstract art as incomprehensible fraud.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Piicrim: Tell me, good friend, is that a dog or a zebra? Artist: That is a perfect dog, ac- cording to Modern Art. The color effect you mention is caused by the sunlight striking his coat. Piicrtm (gasping for air): there is no sunlight. Artist: There was when I painted him. And now let me offer you refreshment. Here is my wife, coming down the stairway. (The Pilgrim looks in the direc- tion indicated and moans piteously as his eye lights on the Vorticist mass.) Pitcrtm: Tell me—oh, tell me, I prithee—which is your wife, and which is the stair? (4s Our Hero’s helpmate grows nearer, the Pilgrim begins to weaken perceptibly; to his uneducated eye the lady resembles a number of tri- angles which have been breaking the 18th Amendment. He staggers and a lavender pallor envelopes him.) Tue Artist: Again you do not understand—but it is quite simple. You have doubtless heard of the famous Cubist Triumph, “Nude De- scending the Staircase.” Well, my wife clings to the Cubist tradition and in her daily life observes it ex- actly. She has a Cubist breakfast for you. I am sure you will like her charlotte russe garnished with mackerel, and her hors d’ceuvre of fish glue and poison ivy has never been equalled. Tue Prucrim (writhing in agony): Something horrible is hap- pening to me. Ah, I know, I have gone color blind. In my vest pocket you will find my will, My life in- surance policy is in escrow. Tell my good wife to go back, on the first boat, ere she becomes an isosceles triangle. Let my friends know I re- sisted until astigmatism overpow- ered me. But Curtain. M.S. To a Débutante (By an Exhausted Admirer) | ae for the bridge at mid-' night When the clock was striking the hour ; I stood for the bootleg rickeys Of 48 white-mule power ; I stood for the jazz in the mornings, The nights and the afternoons, But Nature won’t stand for it, dearie, And so I am off to Muldoon’s, The Tale of a Hornet An orchestral tragedy Nightmare of a Beach Fiend HAVE a friend who got into his bathing suit at six a. M. and didn’t leave the beach until sundown. A fiend in human form came along with a cauldron of scalding water, which he poured over my friend; then he rolled him in the sand until every smarting particle of skin was blistering with the pain. That double-sized elephant then walked off the veranda of the hotel and stepped on his face, and the coast guard who rescued him jabbed a big spike into his back and hauled him over the sharp-edged beach shells to the breeches buoy, into which he threw him, starting himoff for France. A mischievous aeronaut spied him, however,. and taking his sun glass, directed its rays on the rope of the breeches buoy, burning it in twain in a few seconds. My friend fell into the sea and discovered it was the Gulf Stream. A fisherman hauled him out, and after skinning him with his scaling fork, threw the remains on the sand to dry. The doctor says my friend is con- scious again but won’t be able to swim for at least a month. L. A. M. Gapspy (known as a grouch): Try this whisky, old fellow. It’s the kind I give my family. SHELLTON: Haven’t you got any you take yourself? comicbooks.com